How to set up Wordpress on a Hard Drive

How to set up WordPress on Your Hard Drive

Sep
09
2008

xampp/WordPress I’ve found that having wordpress installed on my hard drive makes things like building layouts, testing changes to my blog, testing plugins, etc so much quicker and easier (not to mention getting to avoid those awkward moments after the initial upload, when you realize you forgot a stray punctuation mark).

We’ll be setting up wordpress on our hard drive using XAMPP. Once installed this will also allow you to test php layouts without having to upload them. I’m using Windows so that’s what this tutorial will cover. It shouldn’t be too different to repeat the process on other OSs (Robert set it up on Mac OSX by following this tutorial). This tutorial and the previous statement is based under the assumption that the user has a basic idea of installing applications in their operating system of choice.

Download XAMPP
Extract it to your hard drive’s root directory
Go to the xampplite folder
Run setup_xampp.bat
Run xampp-control.exe
start Apache & MySQL
Open your web browser and go to http://localhost
Select your language
Go to phpMyAdmin
Create a new database with any name you want (I’ll just be using wordpress) with utf8_unicode_ci collation (it’s the very last option in the drop down menu)
Download the latest version of WordPress
Extract to C:xampplite/htdocs and rename the extracted folder to your database’s name
Open wp-confg-sample.php in your text editor and change the following information
Change putyourdbnamehere to the name of your database/folder
Change usernamehere to root
Completely delete yourpasswordhere, just leave the ”
Save the file as wp-config.php
In your browser go to http://localhost/YOURDBNAME/wp-admin/install.php
Enter your blog’s name and your email address and press the install button
You’ll be given your login name and password, write them down
Now just login and you’ll be in the wordpress dashboard. From here everything is just like your online wordpress setup.

That’s it! Now just go have fun, and if you have any questions, I’m sure you know someone to ask who can help you. Just kidding, feel free to leave it in a comment. Pretty sure someone will get back to you.

A Final Word

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33 Responses to “How to set up WordPress on Your Hard Drive”

Matt
September 10th, 2008 at 5:31 am

Nice tutorial. A buddy of mine just turned me onto xampp not too long ago. Good work!

Matts last blog post..WordPress welcome back script
Google Chrome News » Blog Archive » How to set up Wordpress on Your Hard Drive
September 10th, 2008 at 11:40 am

[...] KB wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptOpen your web browser and go to http://localhost; Select your language; Go to phpMyAdmin; Create a new database with any name you want (I’ll just be using wordpress) with utf8_unicode_ci collation (it’s the very last option in the drop … [...]
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September 10th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

[...] Şurdaki sitede, herhangi bir host üzerine değil de kendi bilgisayarımız üzerine nasıl wordpress kurabiliriz diye güzel bir anlatım var.. İngilizce olmasına rağmen anlatımı çok açık, kendimce basamakları sizlere açıklayacağım ve takıldığınız bir yer varsa sizlere yardımcı olmaya çalışacağım. [...]
Angie Bowen
September 12th, 2008 at 12:31 am

@Matt – Thanks so much! I was nervous since it was my first tutorial.
Livi
September 19th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

I had a bit of an issue installing getting this to work.

Everything worked, except I wasn’t able to publish any articles. I could write new posts, but I was unable to publish them. Additinally, I wasn’t be able to edit them after creating them either. After some searching on the web, I found this link:

http://www.apachefriends.org/f/viewtopic.php?t=29577&sid=8455d392b6a4c21a9d3e96141cbf914a

Apparently the integer count was rediculously high, and causing a problem.

This particular post solved my problem:

“Another work-around: before you install, edit wp-admin/include/schema.php and replace all instances of bigint(20) with int(11).”

I deleted the mySQL database I had previously built using the WordPress install, and then edited the schema.php file. When I reinstalled wordpress with the new schema.php file, it worked perfectly.

Thanks for the tutorial. It helped.
Cheers!
Robert Bowen
September 21st, 2008 at 9:28 am

@ Livi, sorry that it was acting up on you. We did three installs, two on windows, and one on a mac to test it out, and didn’t have any of the problems you listed above. So thanks for the heads-up and way to resolve the issue.

Glad it could help.
Beth
September 24th, 2008 at 11:29 am

@Livi

You saved me so much headache with that tip, thank you! I’m new all this (modifying wordpress themes and anything server side), and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.
Beth
September 24th, 2008 at 11:30 am

Oh, and much thanks for the original tutorial as well!
Rikky
October 19th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

Now this some great info!!! Thanks a lot!
alan "canary rental" redman
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:16 am

Thanks for the info.I will give it a try.
Dan, the best gifts blog
November 14th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

I was testing plugins and themes online and it was a slow process.

I never thought that I can install WordPress on my Hard Drive.

Thanks.
Deepti Jain
January 6th, 2009 at 11:25 pm

It’s Nice. I am a newcomer to blog so it really helped me out.
Prasanna Jathan
January 6th, 2009 at 11:34 pm

Thanks… This is what I was looking for…
Tema Tasarımcıları İçin Kaynaklar | iLGinciX TEAM
February 12th, 2009 at 3:19 pm

[...] XAMPP WordPress Kurulumu [...]
Xtence
May 6th, 2009 at 10:39 am

Thanks, finally i got this working local, great tutorial !
xping0451
May 15th, 2009 at 6:22 pm

Now this some great info!!! Thanks a lot!
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June 7th, 2009 at 3:07 am

[...] XAMPP WordPress Kurulumu [...]
adityareddi
June 10th, 2009 at 7:52 pm

have u forgot something?

Extract to C:xampplite\htdocs and rename the extracted folder to your database’s name
Marcello
June 16th, 2009 at 6:25 am

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Hosting
June 16th, 2009 at 8:25 am

verry nice gook
hkdedicatedhosting
June 17th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

Now this some great info!!! Thanks a lot!
oyUn
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 am

Nice tutorial. A buddy of mine just turned me onto xampp not too long ago. Good work!
Resources Every WordPress Theme Developer Should Know About! | Arbenting Freebies
November 5th, 2009 at 7:04 pm

[...] How To Set Up WordPress on a Hard Drive [...]
The Ska
November 17th, 2009 at 10:50 am

Thanks for the help. now i can edit my blog offline and i love your themes!:)
.-= <span class="commentluv">The Ska´s last blog ..Increase Your Blog Traffic</span> =-.
Berufsbekleidung
December 10th, 2009 at 2:39 pm

You saved me so much headache with that tip, thank you! I’m new all this (modifying wordpress themes and anything server side), and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.
Darvin @ Inexpensive Gifts for Men
December 26th, 2009 at 7:10 pm

Wow. I didn’t even know it was possible to have WordPress on your hard drive, but this will be very helpful. Especially, since when I try to tweak my CSS, I sometimes end up with errors on my page while I try to fix them. This isn’t good if Google happens to come by while this error is occurring!

Now I don’t have to worry about this problem.

Thanks.
.-= Darvin @ Inexpensive Gifts for Men´s last blog ..Romantic Christmas Gifts for Men =-.
Mary Frank
January 6th, 2010 at 8:46 am

Nice Tutorial, thanks. Now I can edit & modify it offline, try out different themes at my leisure.
blackberry
February 7th, 2010 at 4:23 am

Thank you very much
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.-= blackberry´s last blog ..iPhone VS Blackberry =-.
โปรแกรมช่วยโหลด
February 20th, 2010 at 11:08 pm

Nice tutorial. A buddy of mine just turned me onto xampp not too long ago. Good work!

hahahahahahahaha
Nicolaj
February 26th, 2010 at 6:20 am

Thanks for this very simple and easy-to-follow tutorial! I was just what I needed in my quest to learn wordpress these next couple of weeks
haybeden
March 22nd, 2010 at 2:35 pm

nice work thanks, finally i got this working local, great tutorial
Erin
June 29th, 2010 at 7:34 pm

I hope someone out there is still reading this thread. I have a question – does the install have to be on the local C: drive? Could it be an external hard drive instead?

thanks
Erin
jens
July 21st, 2010 at 2:36 pm

shit… all things will work. but if i call the “http://localhost/YOURDBNAME/wp-admin/install.php” site, i get this errors:

>> Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-settings.php on line 472

Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-settings.php on line 487

Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-settings.php on line 494

Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-settings.php on line 530 <<

i´ve checked all in the wp-config.php and can´t find the fault. any hints here?
whats about this?